Permaculture Component Database

I'm curious about whether or not anyone has heard of any kind of database (relational or otherwise) which holds (or aims to get) complete information on plants, animals, soil factors, watershed designs, and other permaculture design factors as well as the resources they create (since they're part of a system)

I'm talking pretty detailed: Stuff like which plants are nitrogen fixing, require what sort of temperatures, planting seasons, along with what animals are suitable for what plant classes and climates, water requirments, and even foods and their nutrients.

Just any information anyone can give me on existing databases that might include such information and/or be aiming for this kind of thing.

Well, there is http://www.pfaf.org but it doesn't talk about relations to animals I don't think, other than maybe mentioning that it could be used as animal feed.

I don't we are there yet,or anywhere close. There are many individual databases with a fraction of what you talk about, but nothing that is comprehensive or that can replace a good library.

Appropedia has some good info and potential, but it is still embryonic. Its vision seems to fit rather well with permaculture, as it deals with sustainable food, shelter, 

http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Food_and_agriculture

Agricola is an index of agricultural research. Much of it is biased towards industrial plow operations, but it also indexes many studies for the third world, organic production, etc. The problem with agricola is that it doesn't generally provide an abstract or link to the article - need to get the article through a library. Worth it if one is going to really commit to a particular plant, but not good for quick on line access. 

http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=bbSearch&STARTDB=AGRIDB

There definitely needs to be a complete permaculture database.  Personally I would be willing to donate a few $ to support such an effort if some computer-literate folks would compile it. 

Paul could easily create a permies.com wiki that members can contribute.  It would likely draw more traffic, too.

I think I want to devlop a deep relationship with the appropedia folks for most of that sort of thing. 

I do seem to recall there was an interesting database for plants - maybe the one I'm thinking of is the one listed above.

Would these two not cover what you have in mind?

I think the only reason for me to get involved in this sort of thing (as opposed to something more open) is that I tend to be a bit heavy on deleting stuff that I think doesn't fit.  But I think both of these entities are really good at that already.  And I am getting spread far too thin.  I could use about eight interns to help with all of my projects, but I would first need an intern to manage the interns! 

Hmmmm .... this gets me thinking ....  I wonder if there are folks that might think that what I am doing now is of big enough importance that they would wanna chip in some effort.  I think I'll bring this up in the tinkering forum.

For the time being I'm going to work on the www.permaculture.info wiki. Wikimedia is powerful, I think that with the right people and vision everything can be accomplished on that format.

Eric Toenesmeier is working on something like this http://www.apiosinstitute.org/. There's a two dollar fee to use it though.

mrchuck wrote:
Eric Toenesmeier is working on something like this http://www.apiosinstitute.org/. There's a two dollar fee to use it though.

There is quite a bit of free content which rotates every so often as well. I just checked it out. There's a lot of information there!